


Aftermath

by songsformonkeys



Category: Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins)
Genre: Angst, Gen, WW84 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28389024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songsformonkeys/pseuds/songsformonkeys
Summary: Maxwell almost ended the world. Now he has to find a way to live with the consequences. A stray cat showing up outside his window might help more with that than expected.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 38





	Aftermath

Maxwell sits alone in his apartment. It’s small and worn and…brown. Maxwell hates the color brown. The apartment is sparsely furnished and nothing like the luxurious facade Maxwell once kept. There are a few personal trinkets here and there and a few colorful child’s drawings on the fridge, but the only thing betraying the fact that this is Maxwell Lord’s apartment is the open closet doors that show off a row of fancy suits and colorful shirts. They stand in stark contrast to the rest of the apartment.

Maxwell hasn’t left his apartment for over a week. Doesn’t dare to. The outdoors still hold reminders of what he did, despite the city doing its best to clean up his mess. Mental images of himself in that bunker still haunt Maxwell at night and he wakes up screaming in a pool of sweat that reminds him far too much about how he used to wake up as a kid.

 _”The answer is always more.”_ The words echo in his skull until it threatens to split open down the middle. His search for more had almost cost him everything. Had almost made him lose the one thing that mattered the most. Maxwell can still taste the fear he’d had when running across that lawn, screaming for his son, and the relief when Alastair had finally crawled out of the bushes, alive and well.

Alastair is no longer allowed to come to visit him. Maxwell only gets to see him under the strict supervision of his ex-wife. Even though it pains him, Maxwell can’t even blame her. She’d seen him on the TV, just like everyone else. She knows what he did. Maxwell hasn’t asked what she wished for.

Still, even with her hovering over their shoulders, afternoons with Alastair are still the best moments for Maxwell. Sometimes they watch tv and Alastair patiently teaches him about the different transformers. Other times they draw or play catch in the garden. Alastair is the only one who still looks at Maxwell like he’s someone worth having around, and Maxwell loves him so much it feels like his heart is gonna break. He still wants to give him the world but he isn’t sure how. Maxwell tried it his way and look where that got him.

A scratching noise brings him from his thoughts one day and Maxwell frowns as he looks towards the window, where a ragged ball of orange fur is currently attempting to claw its way through the glass. It’s a cat. Maxwell tries to shoo it away from his spot on the couch but it has no effect. So he stands up and walks over to knock on the window. That earns him a glare from the creature on the fire escape. Maxwell shoos it again and this time it turns its back on him and lazily trots down the stairs.

Now that he’s up and moving around, Maxwell notices that he smells. He runs his hand through greasy strands of hair and wonders when he last showered. Too long ago. So he goes to shower.

The cat is back again the next morning when Maxwell is having a cup of morning coffee in the afternoon and again the next night morning. The scratching is already driving Maxwell insane, echoing through his empty life and disrupting his self-pitying thoughts.

It shows up one night when he’s sitting in the open window, smoking a cigarette. Maxwell doesn’t usually smoke but he’s getting creative with ways to feel sorry for himself in a less pathetic fashion and smoking had seemed like a good idea at the time. He coughs and watches as something orange flies by his field of vision. He knows what it is even without properly seeing it. The cat has become an almost daily annoyance at this point.

Maxwell curses and flicks the cigarette out through the open window. It takes him several minutes to locate the cat’s hiding spot under the bed, and Maxwell is reminded of the times he’s played hide and seek with Alastair and the small but nagging fear he got every time that one of these times Alastair was gonna disappear for good and Maxwell wouldn’t be able to find him. It never happened, of course, but Maxwell hated the idea of losing him, even for just a second.

Attempting to get the cat out from under the bed earns him four long scratches along his forearm and he retaliates by flinging a shoe at the cat, instantly regretting it when the monster sinks its claws and teeth into the expensive leather.

Maxwell gives up before the cat does and it’s only when he thuds his forehead against the soft carpet, frustrated to the brink of tears, that the cat trots past him, whisping its bushy tail across his cheek on its way towards the still open window.

It’s back again the next morning, as if nothing happened the day before, and Maxwell has to admire its persistence.

He wonders where it lives. It doesn’t look starved but not like someone actually cares for it either. The fur is a mess and the tip of its tail is bent at an odd angle that makes Maxwell suspect it has been broken at some point.

Maxwell thinks that if he was a cat, he would be this cat. Then the voice at the back of his head laughs cruelly and he changes his mind. Sure, Maxwell is also unloved and uncared for but where this cat wears its solitude like armor, Maxwell’s loneliness slowly devours him from within. He’s nothing like this cat. He’s a weak and broken man who built a life out of smoke and mirrors. And now he lies naked on the mirror shards, afraid to move and risk cutting himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

”Daddy!” The happy shout from Alastair as he runs towards Maxwell from the front door breathes life into his chest and Maxwell drops to his knees. He hopes it looks like an attempt to better hug his son and not like his legs just gave out on him.

They play with Hotwheels on the living room floor and Alastair lets Maxwell pick the first car. He deliberately picks the second-best one only to see the bright smile of his son as he realizes he’s gonna get the 77 Plymouth Arrow with green flames.

His ex-wife stands in the kitchen, with arms crossed and tight lips. Maxwell ignores her as he and Alastair turn the back of the couch into a mountain ridge on the wild chase from the bandits. In this game, Maxwell isn’t one of the bandits. He’s one of the good guys and Alastair high-fives him when they both escape while the bad guys crash to the bottom of the mountain with loud sounds of explosions.

At some point, lunch is served and Maxwell rolls up the sleeves of his shirt to avoid staining it as he digs into the burger.

”Daddy, what happened to your arm?” Alastair’s eyes are concerned when they spot the red lines on his arm. Maxwell tells him about the cat, embellishing the story a bit and leaving out the bit about throwing a shoe at it. All to make himself seem more sympathetic. Alastair laughs and Maxwell smiles too. Mission accomplished.

When Alastair has gone to wash his hands, Maxwell helps his ex-wife clear the table. She corners him in the kitchen and asks about the arm again. Her eyes are steel, framed by soft lashes. Maxwell looks at the angry red lines on his forearm and his world sways a little as he realizes what it is she’s seeing. He tells her about the cat again, but she doesn’t believe him. She takes the plates from his hands and sets them down in the sink.

”I refuse to pick up the pieces of our kid, if you disappear again, Max,” she tells him.

”I won’t…that’s not…”

”He wouldn’t forgive you a second time.”

”It was the cat,” Maxwell tells her, weakly. She still doesn’t believe him.

He thinks about it on the way home. Wonders if he would have it in him to do it, the way she clearly thinks he has. The cruel voice in his head laughs again and Maxwell closes his eyes.

He takes a shower when he gets home. jerks off, pretending that the hand around his cock is hers. Imagines her dark eyes looking at him the way they had before they turned cold and unloving. In his mind, she whispers his name, not like a curse but like a prayer and he feels powerful. Then he opens his eyes and catches a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror that has yet to fog over, and he remembers that he’s not. He lets go of his half-hard cock like just the thought of touching someone like him disgusts him. It kind of does.

Staring at his own face in the mirror, he hates the way his lip trembles in response to what he sees.

The cat is back again the next morning and Maxwell can’t stand those fucking scratches so he gets up to open the window. The cat pays him no mind as it jumps into the apartment. Maxwell stays in the window for a few moments, breathing in air that doesn’t smell like last night’s leftovers.

The cat wanders around the apartment, inspecting it, before it jumps up to settle down in the armchair next to the couch. It hisses and attempts to claw at him again when he tries to pet it and Maxwell pulls his hand back like a scorned child.

The cat stays until after lunch before it stretches and jumps back out the window again. Maxwell thinks about jumping too but stays on the couch.

It breaks a glass in the kitchen on the next visit and seems entirely unphased by it. Maxwell is the one who’s left picking up the shards and while he’s at it, he decides to clean up the week’s worth of dishes that are gathered in the sink. He doesn’t know what’s more depressing, that he hasn’t done the dishes in a week or the fact that the week’s worth of dishes only consists of three plates, a few forks, a used and reused coffee mug, and a half-eaten box of Thai food that’s begun to smell.

The cat and Maxwell settle into a sort of routine where Maxwell lets it in when it shows up sometime before lunch and back out again sometime in the afternoon or early evening. He’s not allowed to touch it and the cat even hisses if he gets too close to it. Max keeps the kitchen cleaned after the first incident with the glass – he can’t afford to buy new kitchenware right now – and after the cat pees on one of his favorite shirts, Maxwell makes sure to put the clothes away safely in the closet too. The apartment begins to look more like an apartment and less like a dumpster the longer the cat stays.

He impulse buys some cat-food one day at the store, and later yells at the cat for being ungrateful when it only turns up its nose at the food. Next time he’s at the store, he buys a different brand.

Maxwell is allowed to take Alastair to the cinema the day before his birthday and his hands shake with held back sadness in the dark. He whispers his son’s name only to have him look over at Maxwell instead of the movie for a short moment. Alastair smiles and Maxwell notices that he’s lost another one of his baby teeth since the last time they saw each other.

He gets home and lies on the couch with the movie ticket held gingerly in his hand until he falls asleep in the early hours of the morning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

When the cat suddenly stops showing up, Maxwell isn’t surprised, but he is a bit disappointed. The guest, however unfriendly, had been a company of sorts. The cat didn’t know what he’d done. The cat didn’t know that he had almost ended the world. If the cat disliked him, it wasn’t because of those things, and Maxwell could have lived with that.

But the cat is gone and the red cat hairs he finds on his clothes are the only reminder that it had been there at all. Over the next few days, he thinks he hears scratching on the window more than once, but the fire escape is always empty when he does to look.

Then he wakes up one night to screams that, for once, aren’t his own. It’s a pained wailing that resonates with something deep within Maxwell as he gets out of bed and walks to the living room.

He spots the source of the wailing almost instantly, a familiar presence outside the window. But something is wrong. The cat looks wrong. Its ear is torn and it’s oddly resting on its side. The screams it makes aren’t only for attention.

Maxwell flings the window open but the cat doesn’t move. Maxwell grabs a blanket. The cat screams as he picks it up using the blanket as protection for his arms but the cat doesn’t even attempt to claw at him. It’s the first time Maxwell has been allowed to touch the cat and he almost wishes that the cat would take a swipe at him to prove it’s alright. But it doesn’t.

The ride to the animal hospital feels like it takes forever and Maxwell’s heart is beating like he’s got a small frightened bird captured in his chest. He prays to powers he no longer believes in to let him save the cat. He’s not sure why it’s so important but it is. He needs to save the cat, needs to do something right. For once.

It’s only when he’s running through the doors to the animal hospital, with the cat in his arms, that he dimly notes that he’s barefoot and still in his pajamas.

He’s met by a woman in green scrubs that asks for his name.

”Max…Lorenzano”

”Alright, Mr. Lorenzano. Why don’t you take a seat in our waiting room.”

”Don’t let him die,” Maxwell begs, pathetically. The cat doesn’t even like him but the thought of going back to an empty apartment sucks all the air from his lungs.

”Don’t you worry. I’ll take good care of your little friend, I promise,” the woman says calmly and Maxwell believes her.

The wait makes him feel like he’s about to vomit. He drinks mug after mug of water from the water dispenser until it feels like his bladder might explode. He doesn’t dare go to the toilet out of fear that he might miss something and blinks away the images of his father’s disgusted face. _This is different_ , he tells himself. He’s awake and a grown man. But he’s also weak and in the end he has to rush to the bathroom to avoid pissing himself. He bangs his forehead hard against the tile of the wall as he flushes, then washes his hands and sprints back out to the waiting room, just as the woman comes back.

There’s no cat in her arms and Maxwell feels the ground crumble beneath his feet. She catches him in a surprisingly strong grip before his legs can give out.

”It’s okay. Your pet is okay, Mr. Lorenzano.”

It takes a moment for the words to register and when they do, he feels so relieved that he might hug her. And so he does.

If she thinks he’s acting like an insane person, she is polite enough not to point it out.

”What’s its name?” she asks instead.

”I don’t know.”

”You don’t know?”

”It’s not my cat. I just…he just found me.”

That makes the woman smile. Her smile is wide and bright. There’s no pity or fear or disgust in her eyes as she watches him and when she watches him like that, Maxwell feels like he could be anybody. And for the first time in his life, that thought doesn’t scare him.

”Well, you know they say that cats are good judges of character. Yours is lucky to have you.”

”I did good?” He doesn’t mean for it to sound as much like a question as it does. But the woman smiles again.

”You did very good, Mr. Lorenzano.”


End file.
